Cool Sheets, Burning Lungs
by CannibalisticDuck
Summary: Izuku laid prone in her bed, allowing her eyes to flutter to a close. Rain pattered softly on the rooftop, lulling her exhausted body into a sense of rare security. As her hand reached across the mattress, her fingertips brushed across the cool sheets, and she felt a familiar tug of wrongness. Kacchan should be laying beside her.


Izuku laid prone in her bed, allowing her eyes to flutter to a close. Rain pattered softly on the rooftop, lulling her exhausted body into a sense of rare security. As her hand reached across the mattress, her fingertips brushed across the cool sheets, and she felt a familiar tug of wrongness. Kacchan should be laying beside her, half-heartedly muttering about Izuku's tendency to claim more than her share of the bed.

Izuku's eyes snapped open, and she heaved a cough. Her wandering hand quickly threw back the heavy weight of her bedding as Izuku stumbled out of bed and dragged her aching body to hers and Kacchan's shared bathroom. She hunched over and braced her scarred arms on each side of the closest sink as droplets of red dribbled down her chin. Loud, hacking coughs echoed throughout the room and the familiar sensation of wrongness crept up her throat.

As she coughed, she leaned forward to rest her feverish head against the faucet, allowing its hard pressure to dig into the center of her forehead and screwed her eyes tightly shut. Her body shook as she scrambled to _get it out_ so she could take a harsh breath. After minutes of agonizing heaving, the episode drew to a close. She drew a few ragged, uneven breaths and braced herself to open her eyes.

"Fuck."

The white sink was littered with congealed blood and anemone petals. Shifting so that she could rest upon her left forearm, Izuku reached her shaking right index finger into the mess, inelegantly dragging the bloodied petals together. One petal came reluctantly away from a clot of blood to reveal it was connected to a whole mangled flower. Slowly, she counted and recounted the forty-six petals at the base of the sink.

Lifting her face to the mirror, she took in her gaunt appearance. The dark circles beneath her eyes had grown more pronounced, looking like two fresh bruises. Her freckles scattered indiscriminately across her skin were ghastly contrasted by the paleness of her skin. Her curly green hair stuck to her cheeks with a gruesome mixture of blood, saliva, tears and sweat. At the corner of her mouth, a bloodied, spit-slicked white petal stubbornly creased at the corner of her mouth.

Forty-seven.

"Fuck."

It had gotten worse.

Izuku let out a frustrated growl, which ended in a low whine as her throat protested the abuse. She rocked back on her heels and stooped to the cabinet door to find a towel. As she sorted through the pile of clean, white towels, she let out another frustrated whine.

The red hand towel, she remembered, was in the middle of a wash cycle in the laundry room. She would have to make do with a white hand towel and hope Kacchan wouldn't notice.

As Izuku wiped her face, she looked in the mirror and watched detachedly as she rid her face of the evidence. As the towel passed her lips, she watched as the lone anemone petal fell to join the bloodied pile in the basin.

Inspecting her face in the mirror, Izuku determined she was at least passable. While her features remained sickly, there was no trace of flowers or blood. She lifted the corners of her mouth and decided it looked enough like a smile.

She nodded resolutely at the mirror.

"Everything is fine."

As she turned on the faucet, the telltale signs of the front door opening sent a chill through her spine. Mei wasn't meant to come home from school for another forty-five minutes. Besides her and Kacchan, nobody else had a key to the house.

That meant she had seconds to wash up to the bloodstained vanity before Kacchan saw.

Izuku flipped on the faucet and frantically wiped at the petals crusted with blood and spit to the sink. She heard the creak of the stairs as Kacchan made his way to the second floor.

Kacchan wasn't supposed to come home at all today!

"Shit. Shit. Shit. _Shit!_"

The bedroom door opened. Izuku abandoned the sink altogether, flipping the faucet's spout off and slamming the bathroom door behind her.

Kacchan greeted her with a bemused expression.

"Hey, Kacchan! You're home early!" she greeted him cheerily.

"_Tch_. Why the hell are you so jumpy, Deku?"

"N-no reason, Kacchan!"

Kacchan moved to reach the bathroom door but was blocked by a frantic Izuku.

"Move, Deku," Kacchan growled. "I had a long day at the agency, and I've got to take a goddamn piss."

"Why don't you use the downstairs bathroom?" Izuku pleaded as Kacchan gave her an annoyed look and moved toward the bathroom door, again. This time, his hand latched on the doorknob, despite Izuku's best attempts.

She was about to be found out. Kacchan would not be happy. Mei was going to be home soon. She'd been so careful to hide this from them both.

Izuku frantically crossed the bedroom to close and lock its door behind her and pressed her back to the doorway. Whatever happened, Mei could not hear this. As she finished, Izuku look up and took in the furious edges of Kacchan's body as he stepped out of the bathroom.

Gripping the bloodied white towel in his hands, Kacchan hissed, "Something you want to fucking tell me, Deku?"

"I… I—"

"How the fuck did you hide this from me?" Izuku began to feel the telltale rawness in the back of her throat.

Defensively, she exclaimed, "Well, it's not like you're ever home—"

"Like you? Deku, how the hell do you expect me to get to Number One if I'm never working? I can't just sit back and use _your_ excuse of being a hard-working mother to get good ratings with the public. I have to _actually_ put in some _real fucking hero work_! While you're home sitting on your ass—"

"That's what you think of me?" she asked quietly. The room seemed to lose all sound. Her ears rang as her eyes burned with frustration and the irritation in the back of her throat became more insistent. "You know I earned Number One. You _know_ it. I am just as much a hero as you are." Izuku's eyes widened, "What the hell do you think I was doing yesterday 'just sitting on my ass,'" she parroted. "I fucking rescued thirty-eight people from—"

"The Marunouchi District. I know because I was there, and I saved forty-fucking-three people!" Kacchan's hands started sparking. "I do just as much, _if not more_, work than you, and you still get to be shitty Number One. It doesn't make any damned sense! If I were a woman like you, then—"

"Is that why you don't love me?" Izuku screamed past the lump in her throat. "Because your ego isn't stroked enough? Are you kidding? For months, I've been trying to set up dates, create some private time between us, sending Mei off with a babysitter, even asking _Iida Tenya_ for romantic advice and this whole time, you've just been upset that I am a better ranked hero than you?" Incredulously, she shrieked, "I've been choking on flowers for this?"

"That's not what I'm—"

"I thought you were having an affair! All those late hours at the agency, missing dinner, avoiding eye contact, you—" Izuku coughed. "You were just resenting me? Jesus Christ, Kacchan! You even missed Mei's—"

"There you go, again, with the shitty basketball tournament! You're always nagging me about anything, you hag!" Kacchan exploded. "I know I missed it, but then the villains launched an attack in Ginza!"

"Kacchan, it's not like you knew they were going to attack! Apparently, you were just sitting around waiting for a chance to prove you were better—"

"It doesn't matter why I was there because _I was there_. You weren't!"

Silence hung thickly between Izuku and Kacchan as they glared at each other from across the room. Suddenly, Izuku broke the glare to cough, again, into her hands and her eyes widened as it continued. She raced into the bathroom, Kacchan hot on her heels as she hunched over the sink, still streaked red from earlier that afternoon. She scrambled to brace her arms around the sink, accidentally turning the faucet on as she found purchase.

Petal after petal fell from Izuku's mouth, stained red with blood and quickly swirling down the drain. Some were whole flowers, severed from their stems, and they refused to get caught up in the faucet's current. Izuku continued to gag as another whole flower escaped her throat. Kacchan watched with widened eyes as Izuku reached into her mouth to tug crudely at a bunch of stems in her mouth that gave way to a system of roots encased in clots of blood. Breathing heavily, she hunched back over the sink, stems and roots still in hand. As she caught her breath, Izuku looked up from the sink, eyes locking with Kacchan in the mirror.

She turned around, leaning against the vanity for support and opened her mouth to speak to Kacchan again.

"Kacchan," she started, her voice scratchy. She reached blindly behind her, feeling for an empty cup. Silently, Kacchan stepped forward and plucked the cup from the counter. He filled it with water still running from the faucet and passed it to Izuku, face blank, and Izuku nodded her head in appreciation. He stepped back.

Izuku took a few pained sips, then turned around to spit blood back into the sink. She turned back towards Kacchan and finished the glass, keeping it clasped between her hands.

"Kacchan," she croaked, "I realize, now, that you resent me." She hiccupped and continued, slowly. "I still love you dearly, and years ago I would have fought _like hell_ to the very end to make you love me, again. But I can't risk—"

"Deku, what the fuck are you—"

"Let me finish! Please?" Izuku's voice cracked. Kacchan stumbled back as if he had been punched. "You're going to stop talking and listen to me. I deserve that. Yeah?"

With his teeth gritted and his eyes like flint, Kacchan nodded.

Izuku started again.

"I would have fought like hell to make you love me, again, Kacchan. But we have a child to think about, now. Mei needs both her parents, and selfishly throwing my life away in order to win you back puts too much on the line." Izuku paused to catch her breath, steeling herself for the rest of her statement.

Kacchan opened his mouth to speak, again, hands sparking with frustration.

"Stop it! Let me finish!" Izuku glared through glassy eyes at her husband. "My window is closing, Kacchan. I went to Recovery Girl, and she said that if I wait more than a week, I'll be beyond the point of—of the surgery. I _have_ to do it."

Izuku's knees gave out as her body crumpled out of its defensive stance. She sat heavily on the tiled floor, back leaning against the cabinet door and elbows resting atop her knees so her hands could grip her hair. Kacchan paused, taken aback.

Slowly, he said, "Deku." And then, again, stronger. "Deku, you don't have to do that."

His words hung heavy in the air between them, threatening to wrap around Izuku's constricted neck and rob her of air. Kacchan's throat worked with a pained swallow. Izuku closed her eyes, relaxed her grip on her hair and allowed the fight to drain out her fingertips.

Tiredly, she asked, "And do what, Kacchan? Wait for you to love me back?" She looked up to Kacchan. "You know as well as I do that whatever you'd feel for me wouldn't be love. At best, it would be _pity_." Izuku paused as her head hit the door with a dull thud. "And at worst—at worst, you'd feel trapped."

Kacchan stood in place, fists clenching. As the silence stretched longer between them, the crease between Kacchan's eyebrows became more defined and the tension in his shoulders heightened. Each time his fists unfurled, a loud series of sparks pierced the quiet.

At an impasse, Izuku finally stood and made her way to the bedroom, eyes downcast as she maneuvered around the seething figure of Kacchan. As she passed him, his hand spasmed to grip her scarred wrist.

Green eyes met red for one terrible moment.

Then, Kacchan released Izuku's wrist with a snarl, and he stalked out the bedroom door, wrenching it open and shut in one fluid, violent motion.

Kacchan was gone.


End file.
